The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Focus on destination branding

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Friday, Jun 26, 2009
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Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Focus on destination branding

Staff Reporter

Coimbatore has to compete with many cities to attract investment

Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

COLLECTIVE ACTION: (From left) A. Sridharan, convenor, Infrastructure Panel, CII, Coimbatore Zone; Ashok Bakthavathsalam, convenor, ICT Panel, CII, Coimbatore Zone; Ramesh Nair, Managing Director, Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj’s Chennai and Hyderabad Regions; Rajesh B. Lund, vice-president, CREDAI (TN) and S. Ramesh Kumar, Branch Manager, HDFC Ltd. at a panel discussion in Coimbatore on Tuesday. —

COIMBATORE: The Government, commercial and industrial establishments, and citizens, who are key stake-holders of the city, need to focus on developing a brand for it to attract more investments, according to Ramesh Nair, Managing Director of Chennai and Hyderabad regions and Warehousing and Logistics Solutions vertical of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj.

Confederation of Indian Industry organised a panel discussion - “The Coimbatore Edge” – here on Tuesday and released a study report on “Coimbatore – An Emerging Real Estate Destination” conducted by the Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj.

Speaking at the function, Mr. Nair said Coimbatore had to compete with a number of cities, including Ahmedabad, Kochi, Jaipur, Nagpur, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad, in attracting investment.

Some of the factors that gave the tier III cities such as Coimbatore an advantage earlier were lower attrition rate and real estate cost. However, during the last one year these dynamics had changed.

Some of the key features of Coimbatore were infrastructure, man power availability, cost effective operation and relatively lower cost of living.

“So, partners need to highlight these advantages to the target audience.” Tourism, manufacturing and Information Technology were the target audiences.

Coimbatore also needed some “trigger points” that would help investments take off here. The investment of Ford in 1995, the Tidel Park in 2000 and arrival of the Nokia Plant in 2004-2005 were some of the trigger points for Chennai. High profile brands need to set shop here.

Branding a destination enabled investors to take decisions faster. It created a unified image of the city and cleared misconceptions about it. Multi-national companies looked at quantitative and qualitative advantages in a location.

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